The Challenge's Tony fires back at Averey for claiming he wanted to leave season 40

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Challenge: Battle of the Eras, season 40, episode 3, "A Fatal Era."

Everyone knows what happens when you stalemate a vote on The Challenge.

Not only does it piss off TJ Lavin (which should be enough punishment in itself!), it also sends the indecisive people in power straight into elimination themselves. And historically, that never works out well (see: Zach Nichols and Amanda Garcia on Final Reckoning). But Tony Raines and Averey Tressler called each other's bluffs after winning the first team challenge on season 40's Battle of the Eras. The Era 3 captains sent themselves into elimination despite being safe because they couldn't agree on who to send in against Era 1's Darrell Taylor and Jodi Weatherton, and neither Tony nor Averey backed down.

This season's twist, however, is that all the eliminations are individual, so while Averey beat Jodi, Tony lost to Darrell and went home as a result of his refusal to back down. Below, Tony breaks down why he couldn't come to an agreement with Averey and fires back at her claims that he didn't want to be there and quit during his elimination.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Before we get into season 40, I want to back it up to All Stars 4 — we saw you exit early but didn’t get an explanation for why you left, so what happened? Why did you leave early? 

TONY RAINES: Talk about back-to-back disappointments, from All Stars to this one. [I went] home early on All Stars 4 because of personal reasons back home. I got a lot of stuff going on, just family-related, and to get a phone call from my brother like, "You've got to get back," it was devastating. Thank God that when I did make it back, everything was fine, we got everything worked out, it was all good, but it was something that it required my immediate attention, for sure. It was just unfortunate at the timing of the things, but it's just a personal matter.

If you had stayed, do you think that you could have made it all the way to the end and ultimately beat Laurel and Cara?

Oh my God, yes. In those carnival games? Come on, yes, I would've. That was mine to win, for sure. I finished watching out that season, and I feel like it would've been a breeze. Well, I say that, but then with Laurel and Cara, you've got to give them their props. Laurel, she's a monster. Look, it would've been a challenge, but I think I would've had a great chance.

In the first team challenge on season 40, why did you step up as captain? Were you aware that being team captain usually means you go into elimination if your team loses?

Me and Averey both had a sense that, if we don't win this, we're going into elimination. If you win, you're good, you don't, you're in. In the back of our mind, we figured it out. I think everybody else in my team did as well, and that's why they were all very quick to not speak up and nominate themselves as team captain. I already knew I was the odd man out on my squad, they've already thrown me into elimination once, it's the easiest move to throw you back in. So there was really no hesitation.

Era 3 wins the challenge, so you’re safe. But at what point did you realize you and Averey weren’t going to agree on who to send into elimination against Darrell and Jodi?

At the end of that challenge, we had mentioned something about who we're going to nominate, like, "Oh, we've got a tough decision now," or something like that. Me and Averey were walking right next to each other, and she mentioned something about Derek, and I thought to myself, "Oh s---, she's definitely going to try to save Derek." Now, when I asked Darrell who he wants, he was like, "I want Derek." That's when I was like, "Here we go. This makes it a lot more difficult, what am I going to do?"

After talking to Darrell and thinking on it, I thought that was my best path forward. The deal that I made with Darrell was, "If I give you this, you're going to have to give me one back. I'll look out for you now, you look out for me in the future." I figure that's going to be me showing an allegiance to Era 1. If I need a favor, I go to them, they'll pay me back. I thought that was a solid deal.

I also see it from Averey's side — she's known Derek for 10 years. I get it, but I'm looking at it from a game standpoint and I'm taking all friendships out of it and trying to see what my best path is to get to that final. In my mind, that was the route. Obviously, we know it didn't pan out for me like that, but that was my whole thought process.

In deliberation, I said to her, "I realize you don't want Derek to go in, but we're going to have to come to some kind of decision, because if not, then we're going to have to be prepared to go down there in the sand." My mind was made up after that. I'm standing my ground, but if she's going to stand hers, then, hey, we're going to compete.

Do you regret standing your ground now, knowing that it led to your exit?

I'll probably regret it after watching this episode back. I've really tried to suppress it and not think about it too much since it all went down. My first thought is there's no regrets, I stood my ground, that's where I thought my best move was, and I've got to see it through. It didn't work out, but I stuck to my guns. As of right now, it's hard to say that you don't regret the decision that got you sent home when there's a million dollars on the line. I just really thought she'd change her mind. But here we are.

Averey said you didn’t want to be there, which is why you were okay with a stalemate and going into elimination yourself. Is that true?

That was an unnecessary dig at me, to say that I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be there just as bad as anybody else. I'm there for a reason. After taking so long off and missing The Challenge as much as I did, I'm out there trying to make as much money as I possibly can. And No. 1 is to make my girls proud. If I go down to elimination and I get sent home, my little girls aren't going to be proud of me. So for her to say, "He just didn't want to be there," I was like, "Where's that coming from?"

While I was out there, did I say how I miss my family? Yeah, of course. My little girls and my wife are my entire world. You're sharing this information about how you missed Adam and his kids back home, and then I'm talking to you about how I miss my family, I'm confiding in you, and you're going to spin that as, "I just don't even think he wants to be here." That's not the case. I'm out here battling. If I didn't want to be here, I would've lost to Leroy. I could have went out in a better way than I went out on this elimination.

That's something that really rubs me the wrong way. I get she was upset and she didn't think I had a good enough reason not to side with her. She's definitely been slighted in the past — she had Johnny Reilly, which that was a whole toxic thing they had going on, as a partner. And then she had Leroy, who had to leave early with the back injury. I think all that added to her frustration and her saying things that necessarily weren't true or that she didn't mean, or maybe she would even take back at this time.

A lot of cast members also said you didn’t try to win in that elimination and wanted to go home. Is that true?

I only heard that from Averey out there in person, that I can remember. To hear that from you — because I haven't watched the episode yet so I don't know how it's going to air — so hearing that, it's just disappointing. I was giving it 100 percent but my weakness is puzzles. If TJ told me, "You can't leave the sand until you figure this puzzle out," I'd still be in Vietnam. It just wasn't clicking for me. I could not get it figured out, and I'm giving it everything my brain has. Nobody could sit here and say that I didn't give 110 percent out there. I came in second on the Invitational, I beasted through my elimination, I had just as strong showing as anybody else on my squad in the second challenge, and I nominated myself as team captain.

My mood did change once I knew how everything was going to go down with Averey and how her attitude and her mood changed, and how everybody's trying to get me to change my mind of what I'm going to do in the game. I'll be honest with you, I was bummed out. But as far as checked out, absolutely not. When I'm clocked in, I'm clocked in. Tony time. It's unfortunate that I ended up in elimination and it was a puzzle. If it was anything else aside from something like that, I think I'm still there and I've got a pretty good shot to make it pretty far. There's no quit in me.

Do you wish it was a paired elimination with Averey, or are you glad it was individual?

No, I'm so happy that it was individual. Her fear for sure was that we're going to be paired up together, and she already thinks I don't want to be there, so she's worried she's not going to have any control over this and her ass is going home. I know it was a big relief for her, and at the same time, I'm relieved because I didn't want that to be on me. I was 100 percent rooting for her. Whether she believes that or not, I don't know, but I did tell her after she won, "Great job." And she told me to "go eat a d---," and I said, "Maybe I deserve that one."

What happened this season that wasn’t shown in the episodes that you want fans to know about?

One of the things that wasn't aired that I wish they would've shown was the conversation between Cory and myself. Me and Cory have a history — on Final Reckoning, he body slammed on the concrete after I threw his pasta out the window, and since then we haven't spoken a word to each other. We haven't had any type of correspondence with each other. For five, six years, there was nothing between us, no resolution. And seeing him for the first time, it was very, very awkward.

It was something that needed to be had with me and him, especially being on the same team. And going into the first episode when we all were there for the introduction, me and him did have a conversation, and it was a good conversation. We both wanted to put it behind us. He approached me first and I could tell that it was a very real apology from him and he's done a lot of reflecting, he's done a lot of growing, and we squashed it right there and we were able to move on. Now, did his ass throw me into elimination right after that? Yeah. They didn't show this either: I'm like, "Dude, didn't we just make up?" Whatever.

The Challenge: Battle of the Eras airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.